CALGARY- An Alberta rink worker is sharing the story behind his brush with death, after the roof of an arena collapsed while he was inside.
Early Monday morning, the decades-old Sylvan Lake arena caved in. Operator P.D. Sawyer was at work when it happened.
“I could hear two loud bangs and so I continued to flood the ice and make another pass, and I heard two loud bangs. I had no idea that banging was the cinders cracking—and that’s when the roof came down,” he remembers.
“I said, I’m dead.”
“It came down in a big chunk immediately in front of me, and then there was a delay for half a second and then it came down in one big swoosh.”
Miraculously, Sawyer was not injured.
“I was not panicked, I got off the machine and I could see the sky. Not a scratch on me, I couldn’t believe it.”
The seat of his ice resurfacing machine bore the brunt of the debris, leaving Sawyer in a protected pocket near the steering wheel. However, his relief was short lived.
“I remembered the gas lines. The wall that went down had a three inch gas line supplying the multiplex, and I raced over and grabbed wrenches and shut the gas lines off.”
Fire crews arrived soon after, but Sawyer had already escaped on his own. Town officials say they had been planning to tear down the arena, to make way for a leisure centre. It’s believed the roof collapse was caused by an accumulation of snow, but officials are waiting for word from a structural engineer.
As for Sawyer, he leaves behind a job he’s loved for nearly a quarter of a century.
“I’ll never know why I survived. That I will never know.”
Comments